Personality Traits and Gameplay

Forum posted on 11/29/2017 11:22:18 AM

I was thinking about the personality traits and I think we could have people choose the personality of their character using a sliding scale. Creating the personality of their character will give the players more attachment to the character as well as narrow down the path options their characters will have available.

Example: No person is completely selfish and no person is completely selfless. If we have a sliding scale that goes in clicks of say....30% (so people can't take the 50/50 easy way out) and players choose which side of the spectrum their characters will fall on.

In-game the sliders can be used to filter choices that are available to the character. For instance, the 90% selfish character won't be given a choice to risk the death of himself and his troops in an effort to save a small village that won't be able to repay them in any way should they survive. The 90% selfless person won't be given the option to stand by and wait for the village conflict to end so they can go in to mop up the mess and take any remaining supplies back to base. These choices go on to affect reputation and relationships with contacts and urban areas as well as other players if we make a reputation visible.

@Bishop Lake"I feel like while each trait might have its own individual effects, we can take inspiration from the Myers-Briggs Personality index and based on the traits calculate a personality type and have that personality type come with its own "set" benefits ontop of individual ones. For example if someone has more extroverted traits than introverted traits they be considered extroverted and on top of the benefits or cons of the individual traits that leads to that calculation, that person will also have benefits from being extroverted in general."

I like it. This sounds like it might be a good way to lighten the programming load. We should see what we can do to develop the concept.

@JamesWould it be easier for you if we group them together or do them individually?

@Tessa I think we need to figure out 100% how we will feed this into the game mechanic first. Images with choice was one idea but I think we should at least try to think of other before choosing a path. Keep in mind we need somewhat simple approach that is achievable with in our team dynamic. We cant do like a CGI animated show etc or something an AAA game would do. So any idea on how to feed this into the game and make it a blessing and not a tedious task our end user have to do.Thanks, James Fleming Facebook

@James@Bishop LakeSimplicity may very well be the reason for us to present...say 3...different personality profiles the user can choose for their character. IF we narrow down the choices before hand we will already know what we're working with. We can always expand on the personality settings later on in the game but to initially get things going it's probably a good idea to start with a set of traits.

Maybe im not supposed to be privy to all this however if i may add my input? I really liked the idea of either or not being 100% good or bad. But forcing the player to make a decision like the chart. I think that provokes thoughtful and intuitive character creation and will force the player to really think about his decision and what impact that will make. So for example with just three options theres not much wiggle room. Good, bad, or natural. Which is fine in its own sense but doesnt really tantalize the idea of possibility if that makes sense? However if maybe we opened our options to like say four, then from the players perspective they would have consider their actions more and how that will effect their experience. Maybe im not sure whats going on here but I just wanted to add my peace maybe be helpful :)

@JonathanHey hey, thanks for chiming in. The thoughtful character creation was actually why I wanted to do the sliding scale. I think that if a person puts that much effort into creating a character they're going to care more about that character and play the game more. I'm just not sure we have the manpower to make it a reality if we go that direction. This is the part that sucks because we have to find the workable area between what we want and what we can actually do to get the game out.

Okay....I think we want to go with pre-established personality profiles that can be adjusted/personalized by the player and will affect in-game bonuses. I also suggest having certain personality types add extra bonuses if the player with the personality is associated with the clan that would value that personality. We plan to allow players to buy a ticket so to speak that will allow them to switch factions if they don't like the one they are assigned. (Once we have enough players to allow this). Offering bonuses based on clan and personality compatibility may encourage this. It also adds a level of realism to the environment as traits are encouraged and more developed when a person is around like minded people with the same values.

On that note, I personally think to begin with four would be ideal as there are four diffrent categories for the personally types anyway. I also feel it a comfortable amount of choice for the player at this time compaired to 3 or 16. I suggest for contextual reasons we begin with; Analyst - Commander, Diplomat - Advocate, Sentinel - Defender, and Explorer - Entrupenuer. (Based upon info gathered from 16personalitys)

@Bishop & @Tessa I love what you two are doing with the traits however we still have not nailed down how this will be placed in the game. Here are some general question for this topic we need to know now for the mechanics of the game.

When will the player select a trait, or will they?

Will the player be given the ability to change their trait?

What effect will let say two of these traits have on game play itself Analyst vs Sentinel?

We need to nail these down in concert so that we know how to program them now so its an enteric part of our game.

Thank you @James, we've been putting a lot of thought into this. i hope i can awnser your questions to your satisfaction!

Firstly, on point 1 I foresee a player selecting traits during character creation, however i don't know what @Tessa has in mind in way of ideas.

Regarding item two, i believe as personalities are dynamic that they should be able to change. however, I'm not sure weather a player should make that change (and how they would do it) or events and choices should. Again, id like to see what @Tessa is thinking.

Lastly, analyst and sentinel were personality type variants, of which for the time being we are focusing on the commander and defender. As far as interactions between them go i feel as if for example the question of leaving somebody behind to die arose. if it was the logical decision a commander would likely make that choice, however a defender would be at odds with them and would likely choose to save them. of course thats a hypothetical situation and as before id like to also see what @Tessa thinks.

Because we have chosen to go with personality types, of which we will begin with the 4 Bishop is currently working on, we can have the player choose one of the types during the character creation process.

We have talked about the idea of using a slider scale for the individual traits so that each type can become more customizable. I still think it is a good idea to give the player control over their character personality. BUT-This is probably not feasible for beta because it would require more programming to allow the game to respond differently to each change a player akes to their chosen personality card. I still think we should work to make personalities more dynamic as the breadth of the game progresses.

For the cards themselves, we don't have stats or anything to show currently. From what we have completed, bonuses and detractions would occur with predetermined in-game situations. A 'commander' would likely get a bonus to recon. A 'defender' would likely get a bonus to negotiation.

These can be further incorporated into the game when we begin to use the suburbs.

@Team I would like you both to review this link. This would be what I would think we would do with the personality and some of the unit directly. This leads us however to balance issue.

In the game rise of nation there is a slight imbalance when it comes to a player selecting the nation of China. Which gives a bonus to a resource call "Knowledge" which is used to move though each time frame to advance to the next level of technology.

So with this in mind I think it will come down to A and B testing to balance it out by Jonathan and myself until we can get a play tester.

With that I think we should let them pick there personality traits themselves for now as the programming it would take to try to predict this would be pretty heavy.

Are we on the same page? If not or you want to add something please let me know now.

Okay.....I think we are all on the same page. I will work on creating examples of the personality cards based on what @Bishop has done on the Personality Traits agenda and post an example or two here to make sure.

With a visual we should be able to better affirm that we are all going in the same direction and, if not, make the needed adjustments.

@Tessa, I'm curious to see what you come up with, please do what you have planed and we can see where we can go from there. I'm very curious to find out how our information will fit into the cards.

@James, in regards to the rise of nations info you provided i have a few more clarifying questions.

On the rise of nations (RON) page you linked us to, it detailed information about structural monuments that could be built through each age of progression to affect overall game play. How would you suppose we implement this with personality traits?

Would these be one time use perks or would they be on a recharge of some sort (passive vs. temporary buffs) or would having a perk give passive benefits along with a temporary use ability?

Would these traits/perks affect the player/units/both?

Are we still looking into stat bonuses? if so what kind?

While on the RON page i noticed that each stage had roughly 3-4 wonders, i feel like that would be the appropriate number of perks/traits for a character to have in each personality type.

Lastly, we have been working on the personalities pretty in-depth, we can keep all the detailed information we have gathered for use later. However, for the time being would you like something along the lines of say:

Analyst - Commander:

Active Abilities:

Analyze - Can spot traps or find quicker/safer ways around obstacles

Rally - Boosts the stats of local units by a percentage based upon level

Recruit - boosts ability to ally with a neutral or unallyed unit

Decoy - Attracts the attention of AI to designated targets for a short period of time.

This is an example of a character card. A brief description of the personality type followed by bonuses and penalties associated with that type. I have not listed individual traits but those would be included also. I will expand the card later on today. Unfortunately, I have run out of time(the kids have all their games today). But I wanted to post what I have so far so everyone can get an idea of what I'm talking about. Obviously, we would want the in-game cards to be more aesthetically pleasing.

This is closer to what we would want the card to contain. The name of the personality type, a short description, the trait sliders, and a list of bonuses. I've put conditional bonuses/penalties as well as constant bonuses/penalties. I think the inclusion of the penalties will make it more interesting for the player. Each choice comes with a consequence. In a perfect world changing the position of the bar on the slider would change the bonuses showing--once we've worked out all of that information of course. The categories of bonuses listed are:*Base Bonus: a bonus that is always active*Base Penalty: a penalty that is always active*Attack Bonus: a bonus that becomes active when attacking an enemy army/base*Attack Penalty: a penalty that becomes active when attacking an army/base*Defending Bonus: a bonus that becomes active when attacked by an enemy*Defending Penalty: a penalty that becomes active when attacked by an enemy

I think we need to work out a list of bonuses we want to include. This way we can come at it from both directions so to speak. The personalities give some clear advantages and disadvantages so those bonuses are easy. Once we make a list of bonuses we want to exist we can then go the other direction and match the bonus to the personality.

The small list of possible bonuses I have written down are:*bonus to resource harvesting*extra building bonuses unique to personality card*increase in speed of builds and upgrades*cost reduction of builds and upgrades*extra unit bonuses unique to personality card such as health, armor, attack, range, self-healing*increase the distance from/speed with which a combat medic can heal *The ability to build further from the Command Center*Applying stealth to normally visible units/buildings*Removing fog of war before acquiring the space satellites

i don't have a list of penalties as of yet. But this is when I am in the process. Let me know what y'all think.

The building are sample of what stats changes happen in RON along with the nation players select. This is not what we will or will not do. That is the question I'm asking here is where this is going to fit in and the mechanism that it will use.

Both or one or the other that depends on what we want it to be.

Stat bonus will come in all forms but be small in nature to allow us to balance. Some stats will be allowed to be higher then other. Like damage to missiles vs area of effect.

Analyst-Commander All stat bonus should be passive and not have to be activated for the player to use at this time.

Most of what I see under this look like activated ability which would be good for game play and we can use them for the units but I think most of the stats from the personality traits should be stat bonus only. Here is a list of units and building codex we have been working on. This is not set in stone but I think most of these will be apart of the beta release code.

@Tessa I like these cards and the information layout on them I think this should be what we show in-game to player. With the slider I think we might want to too think about that a bit more if that is what we want to do rather then having them just select a personality trait. Looking at them if I was a player and you gave me a choice between them like Dedicated vs Indifferent i'm not sure if there would be a equal amount of people that would not choice dedicated. We would also have to show what these words mean to players in my opinion.

In short its a good concept but how can we if we want to go this direction execute this so that young adults 16 ~ 40 would understand it with just a glance.

One possible solution might be a skill tree rather then a slider? If you pick this you get this else you get this. Then at the end tell them what personality they have and what bonus?

Remember the number one reason to do this is to make the player have a connection with there commander. Like they are the commander so we don't want to loss focus of that. But we need to make it almost brainless else I feel majority of them will just click click click go...

Another solution might be to make predefined personalities and then let them customize them? At least the hardcore dedicated players that want to really get into the game vs the new player that trying us out.

The idea of the cards is that they will be the median used by the player during character creation. If we have the players select individual traits we have to do a LOT more coding in anticipation of hundreds of thousands of possible trait combinations. I would think that we would give the players either a number of base points to use in the traits or better yet, make the balance the traits. If they move one trait three points to the left, they need to have a total of three points on the right side as well. This doesn’t necessarily have to be all in the same trait, but it will force the player to choose and to sacrifice. They can’t have it all. Each bonus comes with a penalty and they must decide which bonus/penalty combinations are the best for their style. I think the sliders are ideal for understanding a balance at a glance. You can visually see how many points are on each side easily.

I am not against the skill tree but I think it’s something that every game does and we want to be different. Also, if the players aren’t going to use the same character for each PvP match they don’t want to spend half an hour going through a skill tree.

We are creating predefined personalities with the Personality Traits agenda. The Commander is one of the four that are currently being created by Bishop. The first four to be used in the game will be Commander, Diplomat, Sentinel, and Entrepreneur. Each of these predefined personalities will have their own set of traits that can be customized using the sliding scales for each trait as shown in the Commander card example.

@Tessa & @Bishop Ok sound like a starting plan once these are done let get them added to the wishlist wiki so I can fit it in when its time. Make sure you reference this forum in the wishlist as well for more information on that subject.

I've been doing some thinking, each of the types we've come up with belong to a group with three other types that are not yet implemented. Seeing as we don't intend on fleshing those out at the current stage, maybe in the future the other three options in each stage should be an unlock opened through game play of the first type in that category. i feel like this could add extra replay-ability and could give us a good platform to build upon later as we could add more types in future updates as part of a planed development. Still we could allow a player to purchase the types in game with in game currency so that next time they begin they can use it. Or we could just allow a player to choose any type from the get go. Just some ideas. In regards to the cards, i don't know much about the planed GUI however when it comes to the cards i feel we could swap out the slate grey background for something more along the lines of this or something that better aligns with current UI: I also think a Bevel on the slider would be advantageous and a more monotone scheme for the bonuses and penalties as we want accent colors to be determined by the personality type chosen.

Shields - i feel that these are classy and stylish ways to represent things. we can do a different style for each type category and a different insignia for each type based upon its contextual advantages.

Commander - Classic red shield style with very dark grey/black border and very dark grey/black insignia of a person a bit larger than a group of others.

Advocate - Round green shield with a white border/light grey and a white/light grey insignia of a dove holding and olive branch in its beak.

Entrepreneur - Yellow Kite-shield with black/dark grey border and a same colored insignia of the earth (or other planet).

In case we wanted to reserve shields and insignia's for clan's we could do that and instead use another object or method of designation for the types and categories.

Furthermore, on another note i feel as if each of the types needs an emblem of sorts so it can be selected from a group at a glance, here are some ideas:
Post notes - Shield style indicates category while insignia represents individual type. We could also theoretically assign a different color to each personality type and use a consistent shield style with or without an insignia. (As we only have 16 in total it wouldn't be that hard to choose colors). I feel this is a mostly graphic thing for the character creation screen, so i don't know how useful this will be.